67. Beyond Value Selling: Building a Culture of Outcome, Impact, and Economic Value

In this episode of B2B Sales Trends, Harry Kendlbacher speaks with Christian Smith, former Chief Revenue Officer at Splunk, about what it really takes to transform a business at scale. Christian helped lead Splunk through a massive shift — from $500M to $5B in recurring revenue and from on-prem to cloud SaaS. Drawing on his 35-year career, he shares what it means to go beyond traditional value selling and align the entire company around outcomes, impact, and economic value. Inside the conversation: - What it takes to lead an enterprise transformation of this magnitude. - Why traditional value selling falls short, and how to apply the Outcome → Impact → Value framework. - How to build a value-aligned organization where product, marketing, and sales speak the same language. - Best practices for defending spend in front of the CFO and giving champions “defendable artifacts” of value. - How to approach CXO conversations with confidence — without overengineering them. - Why use case taxonomies are essential to connecting features to real business outcomes. - What really gets in the way of transformation and how leaders can break down silos to align around the customer. If you’re looking for practical insights on building a culture of value and showing up stronger in executive conversations, this episode is one you’ll want to hear.